


Forget about today (until tomorrow)

by LadyRhiyana



Series: (Come Away) To the Waters and the Wild [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack, F/M, Fluff and Gentle Melancholy, Gen, Mummers and Players, Post-season 7, With sincere apologies to Shakespeare and Bob Dylan, cross-dressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 07:07:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19329586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRhiyana/pseuds/LadyRhiyana
Summary: Jaime and Brienne are still travelling north with a company of mummers. It's a strange, almost purposeless existence, a stolen interlude far from the wider world and its problems.Featuring Bob Dylan (not in person), Shakespeare and a fabled world of always-summer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic follows on from Lady Greensleeves. I would suggest you read that first to get the full effect, but all you need to know is that Jaime is travelling north with a troop of mummers from Lannisport, dressed in women's clothes and calling himself Mistress Jaina Hill.
> 
> Title and lyrics quoted herein are all from Bob Dylan's "Mr Tambourine Man".
> 
> I have to acknowledge the amazing janie_tangerine's "and your memory cannot keep me warm but it never leaves me cold", without which I would never have dared to do anything like this.

The brightly painted wagons are pulled over on the village green, the flickering light of their campfire throwing swift-running shadows over the scenes of great knights and fair maidens. Earlier that afternoon Master Gaven Lantell and his players had performed for the tiny village, enacting all the old stories: Aemon the Dragonknight and his sister-Queen; Jonquil and Florian the Fool; Prince Duncan and Jenny of Oldstones. The grateful villagers had little to offer in the way of coin, but they had offered their hospitality and had shared what food and drink they had – including a few skins of sloe-wine and sweet honey-mead. 

By sunset the whole company has eaten their fill, and as dark falls the wineskins have gone round the fire four and even five times. Brienne is feeling pleasantly mellow, filled with a sense of good companionship and even affection for her motley travelling companions – the laughing, brightly-clad mummers; the guardsmen who follow not for coin but for love; even Bronn. 

The campfire sends sparks flying upward to the black velvet night sky, filled with a river of stars. Pressed against Mistress Jaina’s side, her head wreathed with the scent of wood smoke and sweat and Mistress Jaina’s clean herbal soap, Brienne allows herself to drift, just for a moment. 

One of the mummers, who had been absently tuning his lute and picking out stray notes, begins to weave them together into a plaintive melody, and someone else takes up the song. 

Brienne doesn’t pay it much heed, until a stray phrase catches her ear:

_...play a song for me  
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following' you_

“That’s nice,” Brienne murmurs. “I’ve never heard that one before.”

_...I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade_  
_Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way_  
_I promise to go under it_

“It’s an old, old song of the hills,” Mistress Jaina says. “My mother used to sing it to us. Later, my sister used to sing it to her –” she trails off.

_Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’, swingin’ madly across the sun…_

They fall silent, the singer’s wistful voice shaping a world with no fences but the sky. 

_...Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow_  
_Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free_  
_Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands_  
_With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves_  
_Let me forget about today until tomorrow_

Mistress Jaina stands up, suddenly, and walks away into the night.

The song falters into silence, the lute strings abruptly stilled.

**

_“Long, long ago,” Mistress Jaina says, whispering the words into the quiet darkness between them, “in an enchanted castle by the sea, there were two beautiful golden children, twins born in the same breath, as alike as two peas in a pod.”_

_“You don’t need to –” Brienne begins, her heart twisting within her. She doesn’t want to hear this. She doesn’t want to know._

_Mistress Jaina sighs. “I do need to,” she says. “There is no story that does not begin with the beautiful golden twins.”_

_Brienne gathers all her courage. “Go on, then,” she says._

_Mistress Jaina continues. “When they were young, they had long golden curls and green eyes and were so alike that only their mother could tell them apart. Not their nurses, not their septas, not even their father, sometimes, could tell which was Jaime and which Cersei.”_

_Brienne draws in her breath, but stays silent, not wishing to break Mistress Jaina’s spell._

_“After their mother died the twins drew closer and closer to one another. They lost themselves in their own golden world, believing they could live forever, just the two of them, in a land of always-summer.”_

_“Jaime,” Brienne says, with some mad idea of trying to hold him to her, safe from that long-ago golden spell._

_“But finally the children’s father put an end to their fantasy. He made Jaime cut off his long curls so that he looked more like a boy, and for their next name day he gave Cersei a gown and jewels and Jaime a sword and told them they had to be content with their lot.”_

**

They’re somewhere in the Riverlands, Brienne thinks. They have left the Kingsroad behind them and ventured onto smaller, back-country ways, the mummers leading them on remote paths that the armies of Lannister and Tully never travelled.

Whenever they come across a village or a tiny inn the mummers put on a performance. Sometimes if they manage to please the crowd, they eat well; more often than not, the village is so poor they rely on their own stores. Every night after the evening meal they all sit around the campfire and tell stories, or the mummers will enact a scene, or someone will play an instrument or sing a song. 

Slowly, unhurriedly, they make their way north. It’s a strange, wandering, almost purposeless existence, a stolen interlude far from the wider world and its problems. 

She thinks of Jaime and his fabled world of always-summer. 

When they arrive at Winterfell they will face a long, bitter winter and the armies of the dead. They will face the Dragon Queen and the hatred and contempt of the North for the Lannisters, and Jaime in particular. 

Eventually they will have to face Cersei. 

**

“I won’t let any of them take you,” she vows, later that night in the solitude of their wagon. “No matter what.”

Jaime looks at her for a long, long time, his eyes grave and shadowed. “Stop thinking,” he says, with a small, sad smile. “There’s time enough to face the world tomorrow.”


	2. DVD bonus - deleted crack scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a deleted scene cut from the main ficlet because it didn't match the tone. However, I didn't want to scrap it completely, so please enjoy as a DVD extra.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will from Lannisport is indeed William Shakespeare. The play referenced is "Julius Caesar".
> 
> Jaime as patron of the arts was inspired by a throw-away line from the Rolling Thunder Revue, where one of the interviewees mentions that there aren't many Medicis anymore, and so artists have to try and make a profit as well as music.

Before this strange journey, Brienne had not seen many mummers’ performances. Troops rarely made their way to Tarth, and there had been little opportunity since she had left home to fight for Renly Baratheon. She had seen puppet shows, of course, and once she had loved nothing more than to hear minstrels sing of glory and adventure. 

But an actual performance – a play, as Master Lantell calls them – is like being swept up into a grander world where heroes and villains fight and love and die before her very eyes. 

Sometimes, Master Lantell and his company will stage new plays – not just the old tales, but stories of kings and queens and power and ambition, of love and hatred, of honour and madness and the human condition. Some plays are grand sweeping epics, and some are farcical comedies, but they are told with wit and humour and understanding. 

The playwright, Master Lantell explains, is a friend of his from Lannisport. “Will writes the plays, Ser Brien,” he says, “and we go out into Westeros to perform them.” He steals a look at Mistress Jaina and lowers his voice. “Casterly Rock is always open-handed to those willing to sing The Rains of Castamere at every turn. But Will has always wanted more than that. He wrote a play, many years ago, about a tyrant who would have led the kingdom to ruin, until his most loyal companion finally assassinates him. It’s never performed outside of the Westerlands, but Lord Jaime has been his patron ever since.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've been meaning for a while to write a light-hearted follow-up to Lady Greensleeves explaining how young Jaime ran away with a troop of mummers. This is not that fic. This is the direct result of my watching Netflix's "Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story" and then actually sitting down and listening to the magic that is "Mr Tambourine Man". (Not gonna lie: I'm seriously tempted to do a touring 60s/70s rock star AU now).


End file.
